Poems Read online

  heal our wounds with medicine vinous,

  join or sever loving pairs:

  wash this cancer from my spirit

  (either death or wine must cure it),

  cleanse my bones of those old fires.

  Sober nights rack lonely lovers,

  hope and fear supplant each other.

  But if your gift conjures sleep,

  warming my brain with its ardour,

  I’ll sow hills with vines in order,

  which no birds or beasts can strip.

  Cellar vats will foam with purple,

  new grapes stain the feet that trample –

  my remaining life is yours.

  I’ll be singer of your virtues,

  tell of lightning bolts that birthed you,

  Indian troops routed by choirs,

  vines that roused Lycurgus’ tantrums,

  Pentheus slain by massed Bacchantes,

  and the tendrilled vessel’s crew,

  turned to arching dolphins, diving,

  crowds of Naxos folk imbibing

  fragrant streams of your rich brew.

  I’ll drape you with ivy wreathing,

  crown you with a tarboosh, smoothing

  scented oil round your soft throat;

  barefoot, your long robe vibrating,

  you’ll hear Theban drums pulsating,

  goat-foot Pan playing on the flute.

  Great Cybele with her raucous

  cymbals leads the dancing chorus,

  she who gave our cities towers;

  priests marking your solemn rituals

  pour libations from gold pitchers,

  standing at your temple doors –

  rites that I shall be narrating

  driven by the same afflatus

  that inspired Pindar in Greece,

  if you’ll only liberate me

  from her who humiliates me:

  grant me pure unconsciousness!

  III.18

  The playful sea, end-stopped by tree-fringed Averno,

  steaming pools, warm water overflowing,

  where Aeneas’ trumpeter lies in Cuma sands

  and the waves sound across Hercules’ road –

  here cymbals once clashed for Bacchus of Thebes

  making his benevolent way to Italian cities.

  But now, what malign god halted at your waters,

  Baia, your name a curse on everyone’s lips?

  Marcellus plunged his face into Styx’ ripples,

  a ghost wandering by the underworld lake.

  Pedigree, courage, matchless mother,

  the embrace of Caesar’s home – all valueless.

  Awnings fluttering above the capacity crowd

  at the stadium, everything those young hands achieved?

  He died. Time stood still in his twentieth year,

  sealing so much good in so small a compass.

  Go, give your spirits a lift, imagine triumphs,

  a standing ovation from the whole theatre;

  wear cloth of gold or finer, everything studded

  with Indian pearls: you’ll give the lot to the flames.

  Forget class or caste, there’s just one destination:

  the road’s bad, but everyone must tramp it;

  those three baying dog’s mouths must be appeased,

  the grim greybeard’s ferry boarded (no private yacht).

  Let a man barricade himself with steel or bronze,

  death will still drag him from his hiding place.

  Strength did not exempt Achilles or beauty Nireus,

  nor the wealth washed down by the Pactolus rescue Croesus.

  May the sailor who conveys the souls

  of the righteous carry your lifeless body

  where Claudius, victor of Sicily, and Julius

  forked off the human road to climb ad astra.

  III.19

  You cast our male libido in my face.

  Trust me, you women are more that way inclined.

  Once break the bonds of shame, you cannot

  restrain the female mind.

  Fire will sooner damp down in a cornfield,

  rivers run backwards to their fountainheads,

  Sirt offer safe harbour, treacherous Malea

  extend a friendly greeting to passing sailors,

  than your depravity could be reined in,

  your sexual passion’s goading blunted.

  Take her whose love the Cretan bull rejected

  so donned the fake horns of a fir-wood cow;

  or Tyro, burning for a river,

  who gave her all to Neptune turned to water.

  What of Medea, whose mother-love

  appeased her anger with her children’s slaughter,

  or that adultery which plunged

  Mycenae’s palace into infamy?

  Then Myrrha’s craving for her aged father –

  until she sprouted leaves. Another crime.

  And Scylla sold her father’s kingdom,

  shearing his magic hair for Minos’ beauty:

  a dowry she’d promised the enemy.

  Love opened Nisus’ gates, but in deceit.

  Brides, may your wedding torches burn more brightly

  than hers: a Cretan ship dragged her down.

  Minos rightly is now a judge in hell:

  he won, but acted by his enemy well.

  III.20

  Think he can still remember how you look,

  the one you saw sail off from your embrace?

  A hard man to swap his girl for lucre.

  Was all Africa worth one teardrop down your face?

  Pure folly to trust the gods or his empty words:

  he’s probably clasping a new love to his chest.

  You have potent beauty and the skills of chaste

  Minerva, the glitter of a learned ancestor.

  All your house needs to be blest is a true partner;

  I will be him: darling, come lie with me.

  Sun, who spin out your fire longer in summer,

  shorten the journey of your lingering light;

  my first night is coming, give time for a first night.

  Moon, wait on our first union before you set.

  How many hours will we talk away

  till Venus spurs us to our sweet combat!

  Terms must be settled, pens put to a deal,

  my new amour needs statutes written down.

  Love will enshrine the pledges with his seal,

  witnessed by Ariadne’s starry crown.

  A union that no compact binds

  brings no gods to avenge the insomnia;

  where lust ties bonds, those bonds will soon unwind:

  may our love be sustained by its first aura.

  Let him who breaks vows sworn upon the altar

  and stains the marriage sacrament in another’s

  arms suffer the pains common to lovers;

  let sharp-tongued gossip swirl about his head,

  his mistress close her windows to his tears:

  eternal love eternally frustrated.

  III.21

  I must take the grand tour to Athens, seat of learning,

  hoping love’s burden shakes free on the long road.

  Infatuation grows from constant looking

  at the girl; Amor feeds upon himself.

  I’ve tried every trick to escape – nothing helps:

  still I’m harassed by the insomniac god.

  After frequent refusals, she lets me in once or twice,

  or visits and sleeps fully clothed on the edge of the bed.

  There’s just one hope: a change of country – Cynthia

  out of sight, out of mind.

  Step to it, boys, push the boat out to deep water,

  form into pairs and take shifts at the oars;

  hoist the mainsail up the mast for clear skies:

  the breeze promises sailors a smooth voyage.

  Goodbye to my friends and to the towers
of Rome,

  and you, whatever you mean to me, girl, goodbye.

  I’m a first-time guest of Adriatic foam,

  it’s the turn of marine deities to hear my prayer.

  Then, across the Ionian Sea, when my yacht has rested

  its tired sails in the calm of Corinth port,

  feet, take the strain for what’s next, where the dry

  land of the isthmus holds two seas apart.

  When Piraeus harbour has welcomed me ashore,

  I’ll climb the long ridge of the Athens road.

  There I’ll improve my mind in the colonnade

  of Plato or gardens of the sage Epicurus;

  or study Demosthenes’ weapon, the edge of the tongue,

  and taste the salt of elegant Menander;

  certainly feast my eyes on a famous painting

  or two, the odd ivory or bronze sculpture.

  The passing of years, the sea’s separation of us

  will quietly heal the fissures in my heart;

  if I die, it’ll be by fate, not a worthless love affair;

  the day of such a death will come with honour.

  III.22

  How many years is it you’ve enjoyed cool Cyzicus,

  Tullus, the isthmus in the Sea of Marmara,

  Cybele carved from sacred vine-wood,

  the road Pluto drove for his wife-snatching?

  I don’t begrudge you the cities of the Dardanelles,

  certainly the swans on the Cayster are to be seen,

  and the serpentine channels of meandering Maeander …

  but just spare a thought for how much I miss you,

  Tullus.

  Perhaps you’ll see Atlas propping up the sky,

  Medusa’s head chopped off by Perseus,

  the ox-stalls of Geryon, the marks in the dust

  from Hercules’ and Antaeus’ wrestling match,

  the places where Hesperus’ daughters danced;

  or maybe you’ll sail to the river of Colchis,

  retracing the whole voyage of the Argo,

  raw pine turned into something new – a ship,

  which slid between the rocks behind a dove.

  Roman soil can outdo all these wonders:

  Anything that’s anywhere – you’ll find it here,

  a land of martial strength yet not of villainy:

  the historical record won’t be ashamed of Rome.

  Our power is less in cold steel than

  in decency, a controlled anger in victory.

  For water, we have Tivoli’s Aniene,

  Clitunno from the Umbrian uplands,

  Marcius’ everlasting aqueduct,

  Lake Albano, Nemi among the leaves,

  and the wholesome spring drunk by Pollux’ horse.

  No cobras here, slithering on scaly bellies;

  Italian seas don’t seethe with monsters;

  no Andromeda rattling her chains in place of her mother;

  no banquets in Italy that repel the sun;

  no death sentences by long-distance fire,

  imposed by mothers on their sons;

  no vicious Bacchae hunt Pentheus in a tree,

  no substituted deer launch a Greek fleet;

  here Juno never put horns on her rival

  or spoiled her beauty with a horrid cow’s face.

  This, Tullus, is your mother, the bel paese,

  here office befitting your venerable family,

  citizens to hear your oratory, the prospect of

  much progeny, the proper love of a wife-to-be.

  III.23

  My writing tablets disappeared somewhere,

  and many a masterpiece gone with them!

  Worn by my daily fingerprints,

  even without my seal unmistakably mine.

  They could placate girls when I failed to show,

  fobbing them off with some persuasive line.

  No gold embossing to make them valuable,

  just cheap wax in a frame of common pine.

  Still, they always were my loyal servants,

  always producing excellent results.

  A typical note they brought me might have been:

  ‘I’m furious with you for being late yesterday.

  You found some other, prettier lady, right?

  You made up something bad I’m supposed to have done?’

  Or else: ‘Please come today, we’ll have some fun:

  there’ll be a loving welcome through the night’ –

  the clever things a willing girl will say

  to pass an hour with gentle repartee.

  Oh no! Some miser’s stowing them away

  among his ledgers, filled with his accounts!

  I’ll pay in gold if someone hands them in.

  Cash for just bits of wood? Who could decline?

  Go, boy, and stick this notice on some column.

  My address? Just say: ‘The Esquiline’.

  III.24–25

  Your trust in your beauty, woman, is misplaced:

  it was my poems once made you arrogant.

  My love, Cynthia, heaped such praises on you,

  my verse left you embarrassingly well known.

  I gathered many women’s charms in you,

  when infatuation made you what you weren’t;

  I compared you often to the roseate dawn,

  though you’d contrived the freshness of your face.

  I was forced to say it by love’s branding-iron.

  I was shipwrecked in Aegean waters, taken

  captive, hands twisted behind my back,

  roasted alive in Venus’ cauldron.

  Friends and family could not save me, nor

  the witches of Thessaly cleanse with an ocean.

  But look!

  My garlanded ship has now touched harbour,

  the shoals are passed and I have dropped anchor.

  I’m convalescing, tired of the sea’s huge swell;

  finally my wounds have closed and healed.

  I pledge myself to the goddess of Good Sense,

  if there is one: Jove was deaf to my appeals.

  They laughed at me where tables were laid out;

  anyone could gossip at my expense.

  Five years I served you loyally: you will bite

  your lip remembering my constancy.

  Tears will not help: you used them to ensnare me;

  it’s always a trick, Cynthia, when you cry.

  I’ll cry too as I leave, but the harm lasts longer:

  ours was a team – you wouldn’t make it work.

  Your very threshold wept for me – goodbye

  to the door my angry fist could never break.

  May age weigh on you as imperceptible years

  slide past, and lines disfigure your skin;

  your turn then to endure sneers of rejection,

  shut out, a crone sorry she was once so haughty.

  My page has sung its fateful curse upon you.

  Fear the end that is to come – even to your beauty.

  BOOK FOUR

  IV.1

  Everything you see here, friend, where the megacity of Rome

  now stands was hills and grass till Trojan Aeneas settled,

  and where the Palatine rises, sacred to Apollo,

  was a mating-ground for exiled Evander’s cattle.

  These gilded temples grew from pottery deities,

  no one was ashamed to live in an artless shack,

  Jupiter thundered from the bare Tarpeian Rock

  and immigrant Tiber marked our boundary-walls.

  Now Romulus’ home is mounted up on steps;

  once, just a hearth was all the brothers’ kingdom.

  Parliament, this gleaming mansion for togaed deputies,

  used to house elders in skins, rustic souls;

  a shepherd’s horn called the ancient Romans into session:

  the Senate was a hundred men in a fenced meadow;

  no cavernous theat
res were hung with swirling drapes,

  no stages reeked of ceremonial saffron.

  Nobody was concerned to run after foreign gods,

  just pendulant figurines in a local rite;

  Vesta was poor, and proud of her garlanded donkeys;

  scrawny cows led cheap ceremonies;

  pigs were fattened to sacrifice at a few crossroads,

  and a herdsman offered sheep’s entrails, playing the pipe.

  The leather-clad ploughman plied his bristly whip,

  precursor of dubious Lupercalia rituals;

  raw recruits did not glitter in menacing armour-plate –

  they used burnt staves to fight naked battles.

  Lycmon in his cap pitched the first staff headquarters;

  much of Tatius’ military action was over sheep.

  This was the age of the old tribes – Tities, Ramnes,

  Luceres; of Romulus driving four white horses.

  Bovillae was less suburban with a small city,

  Gabii a metropolis (it’s nothing now),

  Alba a power, foretold by the white sow,

  and going to Fidene was a major trip.

  A son of Rome inherits the name alone,

  not thinking a wolf suckled his forefathers.

  That wolf was the perfect nurse for our polity:

  her milk was fertile – look what bulwarks have grown!

  Here Troy sent its guardian spirits for better futures,

  good auguries sped the boatload of refugees.

  The omens boded well, for the open stomach

  of the fir horse left those gods unscathed

  when a trembling father clung to his son’s neck

  and the flames feared to burn the filial shoulders.

  That boat brought Decius’ heroism, Brutus’ axes,

  Venus came with her progeny Caesar’s weaponry,

  the victorious weaponry of Troy rebirthed;

  fortunate the land that harboured Julus’ deities.

  Sitting by Averno, the quivering Sibyl

  said Remus’ blood must purify the soil;

  Cassandra’s forecasts were brought to the ears